Batman Begins: Anonymity
by linaerys
Summary: A vignette from Bruces missing years. Set one year or so after he left Gotham.


Because it worked, and the truck was relatively unguarded, Bruce now had money in his pocket and a rather insistent companion. The man spoke better English than Bruce did Vietnamese, although not by much. Also because it worked there was a man moaning in pain some five miles away with a bloody bruise on his forehead from Bruce's fist. Bruce hoped that someone would come and find him before blood loss crippled or killed him.

"You come with me," said Bruce's companion. He gave his name as "Tran", but Bruce had a feeling that was just another way of shielding himself from this oddly skilled white man who had come into his circle. Of course his name was "Tran" here. Bruce gave his own name a dozen different ways, and it never mattered if he slipped up and forgot what alias he had most recently taken. Sometimes they just called him "Johnny" because it was easier than remembering.

"You get little, you spend little," said Tran. He pushed Bruce along the pavement, and Bruce stumbled. He had no plans beyond finding a place to sleep undisturbed for a few hours before moving on. Nothing more to learn here. The criminal brethren in Haiphong were no more organized than they had been in Dhaka, Bangalore, or Rangoon, although they did speak better English, and seemed happier to let a the tall, pale Bruce in among them. _They've seen American criminality more than most,_ he thought bitterly, _they can depend upon it_.

Tran called out something in the highly tonal language, and a face appeared at a nearby window, smiling and beckoning. "Cousin," said Tran. _Of course_, thought Bruce. The main difference between here and Gotham, eight thousand miles away, was the vast network of family connections that embraced everyone. Everyone but him. 

They ate fish soup by the light of a kerosene lantern. The communal soup boiler had a ladle, but Bruce was not provided a spoon, so he slurped the dumplings and vegetables out of the bowl with his mouth and surreptitious use of his fingers. The meal was noisy and but not punctuated by conversation. The ubiquitous soup and everything else had disagreed with Bruce for the first few months here, but he grew used to that as he did the strange flavors and to crapping in a hole in the ground. A man can grow used to anything.

Tran took him next to a bar close to Haiphong's waterfront. Bruce considered making his exit now, jumping on the next ship to the next port much as he had left Gotham. His little-stated, or even admitted, goal lay in Hong Kong with the infamous Triad. That organization bore some resemblance to Falcone's in Gotham, and was therefore a worthy object of his study, but Bruce also feared that he would be recognized. Wayne Enterprises had an office in Hong Kong, and over the past year, Bruce had seen newspapers bearing his likeness in every forgotten corner of the globe. The missing scion of a wealthy family made news everywhere. Bruce had grown out his beard and his hair—prickly and hot in the suffocating humidity, but necessary. Syndicates of the Triad existed even here in Haiphong; Bruce had brushed up against them, but they closed themselves off to outsiders.

"Sleep? Please?" Bruce asked before they went in. Tran only grinned and pulled him inside. The music blared sharp, distorted, and high-pitched out of tinny speakers, but conversation was not the main attraction of places such as this. Rather, that was the dancing girls who mingled among the patrons, some wearing high heels and lingerie, and others dressed in even less. Most of them did not even come up to Bruce's shoulder, and so even the older ones looked like children to him.

Tran grin turned predatory. "I come back soon," he said, as he followed one into an alcove. Bruce turned to leave when he felt a tugging on his elbow. One of the diminutive dancers stood there, beckoning him with an expression that seemed shy. He took out some money to send her away.

"Your friend pay," she said. "Come." Bruce shook his head. "You want boy?" she asked. Bruce shook his head again. "Then you come." He started to pull away from her, when she looked up at him with dark, unfathomable eyes and said, "my boss say you come." He looked deeper into the recesses of the club. A few men in sweaty, stained undershirts looked back. Hardly the organized crime bosses he had pictured, but the deference of the customers around them told Bruce that these were more than the petty thieves, the cousins stealing from cousins, with whom he had worked before.

The girl guided him away from these men and into another room that looked like every backwater hotel room Bruce had stayed in when he had enough money—gritty light from a streetlamp outside filtered through slatted shutters and a fan slowly stirred the air. The bed had a bottom sheet but nothing else on it, and the girl sat down and beckoned Bruce to join her.

"No," he said. "I will wait."

"Please," said the girl, and Bruce wondered if she would be punished if he did not comply, or if he was merely inventing reasons that he should go along. The last time had been so long ago, at Princeton, with . . . Cindy? There, women flocked to Gotham's favored son, and his money, and while his moods drove some away, others kept coming to replace them. And Bruce took what they offered, giving nothing back, but he would not do that here. The Bruce Falcone's goons tossed out on a Gotham waterfront was a different man from the one who went in to that club. Or perhaps it was the look on Rachel's face that did it, and Bruce had promised himself that he would drag no more innocents down with him in his mad rush to the bottom.

The girl started to cry, and Bruce gathered her against his chest. She started to pull at his shirt, but he was still clothed, if slightly untucked, when the enforcers came barging in. The girl ran to the far side of the room, and Bruce noticed her face was dry. _Some innocent_, he thought, _more like a trap_. He threw himself out the window, through the rotting shutters, rolled on the ground and took off running. A moment later he heard another sound of breaking wood, and Tran came running after him, but a bullet pierced Tran's back ten paces before he reached Bruce. 

Bruce took off toward the waterfront and boarded a ship bound for Beijing. He and Tran must have ripped off the wrong guy. Now it was time for a new city and a new name. 


End file.
